In the same spirit as my other Keen fan art post, these are some of the non-Keen related (but often partly inspired by Keen or other DOS games) artwork that I create under my regular pseudonym, Jimage.

Starting with the most recent, this is Vaporville, a vector design that I entered in the newschool graphics compo at Switch On Demoparty in Brisbane a few weeks ago. There are a few glitches to be fixed and I'm still not quite happy with the blue foreground clouds, but overall it evolved into something much more polished than I expected. It's exported as a 1080p wallpaper (click for full size), but can scale up as big as I want. I have some ideas for adapting this style into acrylic paintings, maybe even larger murals eventually.

It was based on a drawing from a couple of years ago that evolved when I was stuck for motivation and scribbling randomly. Only this year have I started to figure out how to make use of the concept.

Hoverville was released at Syntax Demoparty in Melbourne last year, not long after I first started using Gravit Designer to adapt the idea into modular vector designs.

While these darker, mystical scifi designs are fun, brighter idyllic tropical environments and futuristic utopian settings have been my main interest for some time.

These actually started as acrylic paintings, but I was struggling too much with the technique to figure out the core concepts and structures and adapted it to vector graphics instead. I have a plan for a colouring book based on these designs and it will swing back into acrylic paintings again at some point.

As stated in the fan art thread, I don't draw people all that much, except as fairly basic game graphics. After getting the hang of sketching faces, I wanted to populate some of these future cities. The more realistic 7- and 5-head-high proportions became too narrow to be visible at wider zoom levels, so it was necessary to work out a chibi format taking some inspiration from oldschool RPGs and a lot of moe anime. The expressions are still a bit too bland but it's something to build from.

These then had to be further adapted an minimised for the side-view style.

It still took many pages of pen sketches to evolve the right style, which now leaves me with a fair range of extra variations to work with for the next round. I'll post a few scans of my latest sketch book next time.

To round things out for this post, here is one of the non-digital mediums I work with--block prints using carved rubber stamps. These are much easier to work with than lino prints, though I plan to work with lino again some time when I have more space for the hot plate. The cards pictured are stocked at a small art store back home. Recently they've started selling a bit more than usual so I'm making a heap more to send back. Previously I'd been using pigment stamp pads which are convenient while travelling with a caravan, but expensive. Block ink applied with a roller is messier but the results are quicker and more consistent.

Dang, Spleen. I would totally play something with graphics like those first two darker ones - I love those. The contrast and the colors are seriously appealing. Not that the rest of your stuff isn't, but those are just grabbing me.

Writer. Translator. Player of games. Only bites on alternate Tuesdays.